Please note: These papers were prepared for the Greek Science course taught at Tufts University by Prof. Gregory Crane in the spring of 1995. The Perseus Project does not and has not edited these student papers. We assume no responsibility over the content of these papers: we present them as is as a part of the course, not as documents in the Perseus Digital Library. We do not have contact information for the authors. Please keep that in mind while reading these papers.

Luke Harms

Inventing Science

Look at the comments on this paper.

1. All arguments state a contradiction to an opinion.

2. Philosophers debate truth primarily in the arena of text.

3. A human in nature has a condition, this condition is described with less ambiguity when the practitioners of discourse use numbers, and the applicable rules of mathematics.

Mathematical systems are considered the least abstract of our representations of truth. Yet even in math, our most precise arrangement of symbols, lurks the likelihood of distortion.

Letters are variable, numbers are constant. Yet a digital semantic exists. English homonyms and a floating context gives rise to ambiguity in discourse. The variability of text leaves verbal slack that can only be picked up by (subjective) interpretation. Likewise, math is subject to measures of estimation, which will never be absolute. This incommensurablity is expressed in one case as "the monster in the middle of the unit square". A square with a side of one length unit, has an area of one squared. [see figure 1]

A line bisecting the square from A to C forms a diagonal with length root two. The square root of two (and of any prime number) is classified as irrational. It is the existence of irrationality in discourse that provides the basis for contradiction. [see figure 2]

One primary topic upon which thinkers continue to stack contradiction is that of the indefinite. If it could be proven we and our perceptions are the almost corporeal spew ofintangibility, an ageless debate would come to an end. Fortunately for the extant doxographers, the potential for future contradiction still exists. It is nearly impossible to absolutely prove anything except the continued appearance of exceptions to our rules.

Verbal and mathematical arguments continue to indicate the existence of an infinite possibility. The question of root two isincommensurable, ie. the mathematical solution is infinite. however, even this is merely a strongly supported hypothesis. [see figure 3]